Long Way To Happy
by Razer Athane
Summary: He's still nothing, but he feels like that maybe he could be something for her. -Steve x Leo, Oneshot-


Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: Freaking steevefox on tumblr drew a thing and I just _I HAD THE FEELS BAD SOMEHOW._ FOR SOMETHING I DON'T EVEN QUITE SHIP.

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><p><strong>LONG WAY TO HAPPY<br>**

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><p>He sees it in the way people talk. That <em>thing<em> he never had.

It's in their eyes, skittering from left to right as a story is told. It's emotive and pure, as they recount a memory from long ago, as they see pictures in their mind that he can never see with them. There are similarities in the tales, of course. Fighting, or the fight to make it for themselves. But Steve will never have what they do. His eyes have never shone like that, no matter how much he tries to absorb their light into his dim heart.

Steve never had a home, and he believes he never will. But he will always try to be happy for those who do, and sympathetic to those who do not.

The closest thing he has to a home is that dingy apartment in Soho, decorated with gold, gloves and grime. But it's not personal at all. It's just a canvas he's painted with things that aren't special; at least he doesn't feel so, no matter what the odd stranger will say. He believes that if fire swallowed the gold, gloves and grime, he wouldn't save a single thing from its burning maw.

The only thing he values is always with him, in his pocket, old and frayed.

There's a voice overhead, loud and booming in Heathrow Airport. It says something about Germany.

Steve looks down at the paper in his hands, and finds that the numbers and letters that this voice is shouting match what is scrawled here in half-pained, half-depressed handwriting. So he puts it back in his pocket and moves to somewhere more visible, because what self-respecting former world champion would lurk near a coke machine?

Hwoarang's habits lurk, and he's gone. Steve's self-respect, too, is gone.

Steve is invisible to the people around him. They walk by and laugh excitedly, returning to that _thing_ he's never had. Or they growl into their mobile phones, or frantically run out to one of the numerous taxies. Many people pass him and don't even recognise his face anymore, from the bouts here or from the Iron Fist. It's a strange thing to adjust to.

"Well, you're not... _there_ anymore," Paul had once said in an off moment of brilliance during a rare phone call. "That's probably why they don't even recognise you now! You're just like them!"

"Good," he had said back then into endless noise.

Pain that vaguely and unhappily reminds him of needles spikes in his arm, pulling him back to the present. He does nothing.

Then there, he sees the reason he drove to the airport today, pulling along a single bag amidst a sea of hundreds. Slap-bang on the front of the luggage is a teddy bear sticker. Her blonde hair is a tiny bit longer than he remembers, but it is no less haphazard. She pulls her scarf up her face a little, blue eyes darting about; at least, until they see him there, invisible in the middle of everybody.

Leo stops in front of him. The wheels on her bag clack against the ground. Then there's silence.

Steve extends a hand and takes the bag away from her, because he knows words are too much for her, and they have been beyond him for about a year. He doesn't know how Paul can keep talking even now, even after the war and after everything everyone had seen. Leo quietly follows behind him, a shadow of her formerly shining self, and her shoes accidentally catch on the back of his heels. But they say nothing.

Steve wonders how many disappointments she had to have to become as lost as him.

"I'm sorry," he tries once as he goes around a corner.

"Don't."

They are silent until they arrive at his pathetic attempt for a home, filled with gold, gloves and grime; and now a glum German is added into the mix.

* * *

><p>By Steve's count, he apologises for the mess three times within the first week, and Leo doesn't respond to any of them. So always afterward, he remains silent and instead sets about to clean a little more of it, or to try and cook something for her. She eats whatever he puts under her nose and always finishes it with a small nod, even if he thinks it tastes revolting.<p>

His counsellor rings on Wednesday at twelve, and Steve doesn't say much, just that somebody needs his help right now and that he'll have to reschedule a phone check-up another time.

He offers to take her on tour around Soho, or wider London if she prefers. Leo shakes her head but finds her voice to say thanks. He suggests training, and she blanches at the idea, usually pulling her knees up to her chest. One time she covered her face, as though she's ashamed that she's so easily letting something she enjoys slip by. He knows the feeling.

He gives her his bed, because it's the right thing to do and Forest, still sore and battered from the accident, showed his happier self long ago the wonders of a lumpy sofa. He misses Forest's soup, because it was so comforting, and the lumpy sofa reminds him of that. Of a time that was good.

Steve wonders where his happier self went, and how far he'd have to dig to find him again.

He hears Leo crying at night sometimes, and he knows there's nothing he can do but let her. Often she tries to muffle the sound, but she knows he can hear her in this dingy apartment. Sometimes the way her hiccups sound remind him of his own when he wasn't a child, but an experiment. A soft break in an innocent sound.

One night Leo wakes up screaming for her Mother. That reminds him of himself too. Steve still doesn't walk down the hall to her, still doesn't ask if she's alright, and still can't find it in himself to sleep. Instead he finds a cushion to hold tighter, ignores the growing feeling of hundreds of needles going into his left arm, and hopes that he doesn't wake up screaming for her Mother in the morning too like he used to.

When he wakes, he suggests that she walks with him outside. But Leo isn't the adventurous lion anymore.

It's almost impossible to dissociate her from that.

* * *

><p>He remembers the day that the phone rang, because his knuckles were bleeding. 'Too violent' the coach said.<p>

Steve remembers answering it, if only to stop its persistent ringing because it was hurting his head; and he remembers how the blood looked slowly crawling down his fingers. He remembers Leo's voice, and how it just _didn't_ sound like her. Like all the light had been sucked out of every word. He remembers asking, "Are you alright?"

"I need to get away. Can I stay with you in England?"

Blunt, simple, nothing like the million-miles-per-hour voice he met a few months earlier. This voice is nothing like the excitement in her voice when she sees the photo of her Mother in his pocket, and nothing like the Leo Kliesen he heard of in stories from someone he cared about. Nothing like the curiosity she displayed when she deduced that he is NT01, the boy she had found in the data records.

_I am not a number, I am a man. I am not a number, I am a man._

He remembers Leo swallowing, because he'd been quiet for too long, because he'd been breathing too hard, "I tried Asuka and Xiaoyu, b-but they can't, there are too many things the need to do after Jin's war... I've booked a plane over to London... I was hoping that _you_ might be able to let me stay at your place for a while. I just, _I just_ –"

"What are your flight details?"

* * *

><p>He still has the text in his phone and often looks at it when she's asleep. The one she sent to him before she took off, the one he received as he got out of bed to get himself right and drive to Heathrow Airport.<p>

'_My Father is dead.'_

Steve didn't speak to Leo much in the previous tournament, but he heard from others that her Father had been missing for years and that her Mother was dead.

That still hurts, the dead part. Because Leo's Mother tried to give him that _thing_ that he's never held in his heart, head or hands. Not even with the people she managed to give him to. He hadn't seen the Fox family in years, and he didn't care. His birth-Mother tried to kill him, and he still didn't care.

This lack of care scares him.

But he and Leo, they weren't _friends,_ but it's not like they were _rivals_. Leo's just _there_ in Steve's life, and Steve is just _there_ in Leo's. A good, solid, predictable person. Someone with a nice heart and good intentions, someone who you know won't go about to hurt people. Not the Hwoarangs and Asukas of this world, the friends that you could forgive for forgetting, the friends with black spots on their hearts and far too much painful unpredictability.

He hates to think that he was the last option she had. But he's sure that was the case.

Steve may have given up on himself. He may see himself as a has-been and a could've-been, someone who was no longer worth watching or helping. But Leo, _fucking Leo_, he'd be _damned_ if he let someone as bright, cheerful and caring as her fall into the same goddamn hole as him.

So he makes her breakfast, yells down the corridor that he's going training, and leaves her to sloth around his dingy apartment for the second week in a row.

* * *

><p>On the seventeenth day, Leo makes the effort to talk to him. "May I change the channel?"<p>

"You can do whatever you like," Steve says, rubbing his horrible, scarred arm because it's hurting him more than usual. Sometimes he still feels the needles, but today is thankfully not one of those days.

But Leo notices this. Leo notices a lot of things, probably, but she keeps those cards close to heart rather than throw them out at the world to see. She is clever and cautious, preferring to calculate rather than leave it to luck. So she asks, "Arm giving you trouble?"

"Yes."

"Have you considered having a doctor look at it? I don't mean to be offensive, but it looks like its debilitating."

Steve says nothing for a few moments. It's a nerve he doesn't like to tread on. So instead he spins the situation back onto her, because if he's letting her live in the apartment for an unspecified amount of time, then he would like some answers. "Where did they find your Father's corpse?"

"I don't want to talk about that," she snits.

"And I don't want to talk about this," he huffs.

They watch Eggheads for a while – it at least has them focused on something – and then decide to order a pizza. Steve pays, Leo opens the box, and then she sheepishly holds out a slice to him that acts as a truce of sorts for the time being.

Steve shatters the silence, "Did I ever tell you about the time Marshall decided to prank Paul and myself by throwing _laxatives_ all over a pizza he cooked for us?"

"...Right when I'm eating. Thanks."

Leo notices a lot of things, probably; but Steve notices just as much. Namely the way she struggles to hide one of her old smiles, one that he is determined to fight for again.

* * *

><p>Paul calls one night, and it's Leo who answers. Steve can hear Paul's loud gasp and 'don't tell me Foxy's got a girl?!' from the kitchen and ends up spilling <em>far<em> too much olive oil into the meal he's making and all over the counter. Leo seems just as annoyed at the comment and leaves the phone for him to pick up while she goes to sulk about in her – _his, _its _his_ – bedroom.

"Just so you know," Steve begins, "you've ruined a perfectly good meal I was cooking."

"Are there scented candles?" Paul asks, and Steve _swears_ he can _hear_ the grin.

"No. Nothing like that. Leo just needs a place to stay for a while. She's... lost someone she loves."

Paul, to his credit, doesn't press further and instead gives updates about the Law Family. Steve cleans up the mess he made and listens. Paul asks how his depression is going, and Steve instead asks to talk about something else. Paul then says, "You heard about old man Doo San? He's in hospital. Seriously sick."

His first thought should be 'is Hwoarang alright,' but instead it's 'how does Paul know this,' and that bothers him. Steve listens, surprised that someone as strong as Baek had a stroke, and yet morbidly fascinated that such a seemingly indomitable man could possibly die. What has he become?

The call ends, he texts Hwoarang, and then Leo is magically back in the living room watching him oddly. "What?"

"I, uh," Leo starts awkwardly, wringing her hands and shifting childishly from one foot to the other, "So you know, despite what my reaction was, the idea of dating you _is not_ totally repulsive. That is if I were actually _interested_ in a former boxing world champion with a hideous hairstyle and too many Union Jacks in his apartment."

Steve laughs for the first time in a year.

* * *

><p>He's walking home from training one day when he sees a teddy bear in a shop window.<p>

It's light brown and has bright eyes, like Leo's used to be. And it's sizeable, he deduces, but he doesn't know anything about teddy bears. He doesn't know what brand will appreciate in value, he doesn't know if the stitching is good quality. The first bear he was given was when he was eight years old and shortly after he'd been given to the Fox family. Treasure it, they had said. It'll comfort you, they had said.

He didn't know how a bear was supposed to stitch up in his heart, but he figures it might help Leo. She's been living out of her bag and hasn't so much as set a foot outside his apartment. It'd be nice if she had something new, something to call her own in his apartment.

So he buys it, the furry thing with an orange bow around its neck, and continues to walk home, wondering how to explain it.

Steve finds that he doesn't really need to say anything at all. She's sitting on his lumpy sofa, staring into space, or possibly watching the way the curtain billows in the slight wind. Once she registers his return, he holds the bear out to her and watches as she gingerly takes it and hugs the thing almost within an inch of its life.

Leo swallows, "You didn't have to do this for me."

"You're right, I didn't. But I chose to. It reminded me of you."

He sets about to cook dinner again, but she interrupts and asks to go outside and eat at a restaurant someplace else instead. Somewhere quiet and away from the paparazzi, where she can come back into the world at her own pace. Somewhere where they can just _be._

Leo admits at dinner that night, still holding the bear, that her Father was the last family she had left – that all of her hopes of normalcy, of a life, died the moment they found his body. Steve in turn says he hasn't seen his adoptive family since before the fourth tournament, and that he doesn't mind, as long as they're healthy. It sort of becomes a game then, a fact for a fact.

Leo loves strawberries. Steve loves rockmelon. Leo remembers the first tooth she ever lost, because she was hiking to a cave with her Father. Steve says that he wishes he had a young memory as precious and nice as that, so he instead settles for telling her about how Leo's Mother would be his only comfort in the lab.

"How did you get past all that? The NT01 thing," Leo inquires.

Steve's response is reflexive, instinctive, tight, "I am not a number, I am a man."

"I'm sorry, I meant... I meant how did you overcome all that?"

Steve is quiet for many moments, poking at the salad on his plate with mild interest. He sucks on his bottom lip as he tries to find a response, but he realises he has none, because there is none. He looks back up to her and finds she's watching him with expressed interest. Steve finally answers, "I don't think I have."

The response almost deflates her, as though she wanted to replicate his solution.

"You need to live, Leo," Steve says after a while.

"I'm trying," she replies feebly, holding the teddy bear closer to body.

"Try more. For me."

* * *

><p>Leo begins to join him in training, except for days where she feels crippled by the sadness. Steve's long past feeling a difference in the strength of his sadness, but he understands because he remembers how it had been. Now it is a constant low that never changes, and it sickens him, especially for how he has changed because of it.<p>

He used to be on top of the world, and now he is at the bottom of it all.

He returns from one Leo-less session one day to find her holding several boxes of his anti-depressant tablets in her hands. The ones he said to his counsellor that he was taking, but in reality had stopped taking several months ago, before Leo stumbled back into his life and into his dingy apartment.

"These are anti-depressants," Leo says slowly, looking at him from across the room.

"Wonderful observational skills you have."

"You are depressed, you... You are sick."

His eyes narrow at that, because he is not sick, or he doesn't feel that he is. He long stopped thinking that way about himself. He's stable and functional to some degree. He's fortunate in that regard because he knows that not everyone can function through depression like that.

"I shouldn't have bothered you," she places them back on the kitchen counter and begins to head to her – _his _– bedroom, presumably to repack her things. "I never should have bothered you, I should have just gone somewhere else, like New Zealand or –"

Steve's faster than her and he shuts the door to the bedroom before she can worm her way in there and start packing up her life. "You didn't bother me. You're not bothering me."

"But you have your own problems, Steve," and, god dammit, her bottom lip begins to tremble. "You have to fix this. You were a _lab experiment_ for goodness sake, and everything you ever knew has just... crumbled because of Jin and –"

"Leo, _stop._"

"Why are you helping me?" Leo whimpers, rubbing at her face and then hating herself for being in such a state. Because she remembers a lion who wasn't afraid of anything, and here she is afraid of her own emotions.

Steve puts both his hands on her shaking shoulders. He's somehow surprised and unsurprised that she leans into his warm touch a little. "Because I chose to. Because I want to. Because I am _not_ going to let you become like me."

She breaks then, unbreakable Leo, "I miss them s-so much..."

Steve can't pretend to understand the strength of her grief, so he does the only thing he thinks is right and holds her.

* * *

><p>Two days after she nearly left and after a very loud phone call from Asuka, Leo asks to be shown around London for the next week. Steve takes her to every place he can think of, two places a day that haven't been too badly affected by Jin's global war. He ignores another call from his counsellor and watches Leo live. She asks about seeing the Hogwarts castle next, but he laughs and says, "That's up north, bordering Scotland."<p>

"Should've gone there."

"Ah, but then you'd have no company."

"I suppose having _you_ for a friend is better than seeing _the Hogwarts castle._"

He stops walking then and clenches his fists inside his pockets. He feels confused and looks at her as she continues to walk, oblivious to his stop and playing with the ends of her jacket. Once she notices he's not beside her, Leo looks over her shoulder, her hair, longer from lack of care, sweeping over it. Steve asks, "Is that how you see me?"

"Should I be seeing you in another way?" Leo asks tentatively, as though every word she speaks is a new eggshell to walk on.

"No. I'm just pleased to hear that."

She smiles – _the old smile_ – and extends her hand to him. He takes it and continues to walk with her, trying to summon a smile of his own. It doesn't reach his eyes, and it feels fake, but not entirely so.

He supposes that's progress.

That night when he looks into himself, he feels like he can reach higher out of the hole he has been in for too long.

* * *

><p>Soon, Leo never misses a training session. She begins to take turns cooking meals at Steve's dingy apartment, which isn't so dingy anymore but is now definitely clean. Steve begins to polish some of his trophies, tired of seeing dust on them, but he doesn't know why something that small bothers him.<p>

She's washing the dishes when he pulls out from his pocket the only thing that's precious to him. He unfolds the photo of his younger self beside Leo's Mother, all prim, proper and frozen in time. He glances up from the photo and at Leo herself, who is humming quiet melodies. Her hair's beginning to fall to the middle of her back now, and she's mentioned in the past that it feels strange, but perhaps comforting.

She looks just like her Mother.

Steve doesn't want to see Emma in Leo, because Leo is not a reflection of her Mother or her Father. Leo is her own person, not a ghost of someone he once cared for.

"What have you got there?" Leo asks, wiping up the last of the dishes.

He thinks he should hide it immediately, stuff it back into his pocket and keep it all for himself and only himself. Instead he waits for her to come over and holds out the photo to her, watching as her eyes widen and her shoulders slump. "Please be careful with it. It's old and it's the only thing I really care about."

Because he's never had a _home,_ that _thing_ that Emma tried so hard to give him in somewhere so horrible. But Emma is a symbol of a home to him, because she tried so hard for him.

"I think my hair's nearly as long as hers now, when I was really small that is," Leo comments sadly. He can tell by the look on her face that she's thinking of her Father, and possibly of how he loved how gold their hair was.

"You should cut it."

She blinks at him and returns the photo, "Why?"

"You're your own person, Leo. You're not your Mother or your Father."

"I'm not trying to be them."

"No, but, people who lose someone they care about sometimes try to find things in themselves that they had too, to hold onto a sense of familiarity. Because the fear of losing that familiarity is like finally losing that person altogether. It's a subconscious thing I think.

"I remember stories in a cold, dank laboratory about a little girl who absolutely refused to wear dresses. I remember stories about how you skinned your knees and were _proud_ of it. I remember hearing about a little girl who was different and never tried to be someone she wasn't."

Leo does not emulate – _she creates_.

"If I cut my hair, then you have to promise to call your counsellor."

"I don't want to bloody talk to him right now. You are my priority."

"Do it or no deal."

His phone rings, and its Marshall on the other end of the line asking how they both are.

He calls his counsellor at ten the next day just before Leo goes to train by herself. When she returns hours later, she looks like the Leo he remembers, but better, stronger. Perhaps not quite as happy yet, but well on the way.

He considers for a moment that he asked her to cut her hair for his own sense of familiarity, so that he sees Leo and not Emma; but when he sees that smile and watches her shake her short hair all about and giggle, he decides to laugh and join her, no matter how stupid it might look.

If Steve were to guess at what happiness felt like again, he'd suppose it was like a brighter version of this.

* * *

><p>One night, Steve considers drinking again. Then he remembers that time he had his stomach pumped from drinking way too much and instead leaves his dingy apartment full of gold, gloves and not-grime, heading upstairs onto the rooftop.<p>

He sees himself again, a boy of six, and he can fucking _feel_ the needles in his left arm.

He's punched it until it's become numb but it doesn't shake the needles, _needles, needles._

Steve doesn't come up here much, but every time he does, he makes a mental note to come up more often – but, he never does. It's been pissing down raining for the past fortnight, and only now it's stopped. There are puddles here, and he edges around them carefully, his neck craned upward to the stars that he can see.

"Are you alright?"

"I thought you were asleep, Leo."

"I was, but, you slammed the door pretty loudly," she yawns.

And then, after a beat, he grips his arm and reminds himself that he is a man, not a number.

Leo notices, as she always does, as she notices it all. She closes the distance and reaches for it, enclosing both her small hands around his arm, feeling it twitch beneath her palms. She curls herself around it. "You didn't answer my question, Steve."

"Needles, I – I can feel the needles."

She doesn't press any further and hugs his arm tighter. She looks at their feet by a particularly large puddle, at their reflection in it and how he looks to the sky and she to the ground.

"Your Mother used to take me outside the laboratory at night, sometimes," Steve begins, raising his free hand to barely rest it above her knuckles. "I used to wish on the first star I'd see after my eyes adjusted. I'd wish that someone would take me away from the laboratory and give me a home. But the house I was placed in never felt like I thought it would. It wasn't home."

Once, Steve thought that having all of that attention that he used to have as the boxing world champion would make it feel like he had a big family. Instead it made him feel empty and bitter, like the laboratory that's in the foggier, more painful part of his memories. And he hates that he thought like that in the first place.

"After my Father's funeral," Leo starts slowly, "I sold most of my things. I have a few family treasures in storage, but my house, it's gone now. I couldn't bear to walk through it and not hear the heavy footstep of my Father, or the feather-light one of my Mother. I have no home."

"Me neither."

Leo laughs, "You have people who adopted you."

"That never felt right. None of it. That was a house, not a home."

"Then what makes a home?"

Steve knew he couldn't answer that, but he was very surprised to find that Leo too was speechless. He clears his throat, "I don't know what makes a house a home, but just know that you're welcome to stay here permanently if you want. Or if you still want to take off to New Zealand, I'm sure I can –"

It begins to rain again before he can finish his sentence, and Leo, lovely Leo laughs and leads him back inside.

When he's back on his lumpy sofa, he realises the needles are gone.

* * *

><p>Hwoarang calls him one Saturday afternoon, when Leo decided to go to a carnival by herself and Steve decided a day in would be great for him.<p>

"You sound like shit," Steve says.

"Yeah, well you know what? Go fuck yourself." But he didn't mean it, he ever does.

Steve hums a little and sits up, "How is the old man doing? Is he any better? It's been a few months since Paul told me. Still wondering how he knew, to be honest."

"Paul's full of wonders. You should know that by now." There's a crack and a long, drawn out sigh. "I don't know how he is, Steve. They say that his vitals are looking good, but they're worried that he's not come out of the coma yet. They're not sure of the damage that's been done. They keep... saying that I should stop hoping. That I should just let him die. He never gave up on me; I can't do that to him."

Steve should feel sad, but instead he feels curious about the afterlife. He finds enough sense of self, though, to look past his thoughts and say, "Hey now, it'll be alright. If his vitals are good then I would assume that he'll be back to shouting at you in no time."

Hwoarang's voice cracks, "I'd give anything for him to yell at me again."

He realises something, then, as his heart shakes a little at the sound of his friend's desperation, because it is something human. Because underneath that desperation is the sound of home, and a longing to return to it.

They eventually end the phone call after promising to not give up hope. Hwoarang for Baek. Steve on his happiness. He feels sort of sullen afterward, and Leo notices when she returns with cotton candy that's almost completely eaten.

Leo asks who that was. Steve gives her the update and, once the cotton candy is finished, she sighs and sits on the arm of the chair he's sitting in. "I liked Baek. I don't like to think that he might join my parents soon."

She's quiet after that, because she hates remembering that her parents are dead. Steve still doesn't know where her Father's body was found. But she still struggles to accept that he's not a hope anymore. One thing's for sure, she is better than when she arrived.

That's all he wanted.

"I think I know what makes a home," Steve says.

That conversation had been a while ago now, but Leo turns to face him, wide-eyed and fiddling with the stick.

"There are many concepts of home," Steve begins quietly, looking at the ugly scar that holds his arm as tightly as the very memory of a dark, dank laboratory with only a single ray of light. "People tell me about their home a lot, from their childhood or the one they made for themselves.

"Ling Xiaoyu grew up with her Grandfather, and what she remembers best is the sweets he never failed to give her. She remembers sharing stories with him about school, and she's told me that she can remember perfectly the first time they made a cake together.

"To Paul Phoenix, home is lying down on Marshall's couch, smelling Marshall's and Forest's cooking; and listening to his best friend's wife compose soft melodies on a dusty, old piano. He says he stinks and smells like petrol, but that none of them mind at all. He always felt accepted, welcomed and enjoyed.

"Hwoarang will never, _ever_ admit that Baek gave him a home and a purpose, but you can see it in the way he smiles at the only person he considers worth a damn. And that's probably why the man will break if Baek doesn't wake up again.

"Those are the things that stay with you. Not the house, or the colour of the bricks or the way that the flowers are arranged. It's not the way that the shower feels on your back or the meals you make, or the feel of freshly washed sheets around your body. It's the people that you're with through the bad and the good. It's the people you love. That's home."

And _he wishes_ he had it.

"The people I love are dead," Leo murmurs softly.

"Then you'll just have to learn to love again, somehow."

She gazes at him. It's intense, and studying; and then she collects her bear from the couch across and heads down the hall.

* * *

><p>Leo begins to personalise his dingy apartment.<p>

Well it's _their_ dingy apartment now, let's be realistic. It's not like Leo's going to move out any time soon, and Steve doesn't want her to. He likes having her around, his good friend, the little ball of sunshine that barely falters anymore.

First she buys new curtains. He thinks it's a good idea, because the light blue ones that are literally over every window can be a bit of a downer at times, and they're so boring. She puts up chequered ones, with red and black and white, and thin lines. "They remind me of those awful shirts that feel awkward to button up."

"Maybe you should start walking around shirtless then," she quips as she's hanging the last of them back up.

"I'm sure you'd enjoy that," Steve teases with a grin.

"Or for all you know I could secretly be going out with Asuka."

"You're a terrible liar," he laughs.

It feels good to laugh again, now, more often than he has in his memory. He hopes she's the same, coming out of the hole she fell into. He's not out and he knows it. But he's making his way there and he believes she's made that crucial difference: she's made him try.

For too long Steve was content to go through life like this. In a constant, level state of depression. But Leo's given him a reason to try.

She tried for him. So he will try for her.

Then she buys a Christmas tree in _late October,_ because she _can't believe_ he doesn't have one. It's small, plastic and silver, big enough to put on the side table beside the television. It's got its own little red, orange and blue baubles.

Soon, some of her items from Germany ship out. Just small things, like a small, model boat and some folklore books that she adored. Steve asks, putting them beside his books in his bookshelf, "Will you read some of these to me one day?"

The smile that splits Leo's face open after that has his heart do strange shit.

"Next on the list is a bed, so I can stop stealing yours," Leo says later, looking for her favourite mittens. "Unless you don't mind that lumpy sofa."

"Lumpy sofas remind me of Forest, and that reminds me of good times. But I do miss my bed, and you don't need to buy one for yourself if you're content with sharing."

There's a pillow fort between them for the first few days, but then it eventually crumbles away, like old walls. Within days after that he finds that she likes cuddling – 'strictly friend cuddling' she said – and he likes knowing that she's close by, and that he isn't alone anymore.

Steve tries to put his own touches to the apartment. He buys a few logic books and a large, abstract painting. He also gets a tiny soldier and sticks it by the house phone. He doesn't know what else to get.

They're shopping one day in the cold when Leo pulls him into the most generic holiday store he's ever seen in his life. There's Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations everywhere. He supposes that stuff like this reminds Leo of her family, of the home she once had but lost. But he can't focus on that, not when he's being pulled by the hand towards the hats section.

"This would suit you perfectly!" she shouts, grabbing a beanie that had ridiculously long earflaps and wonky Christmas trees going around in circles. She starts trying to shove it into his hand, "Put it on, put it on."

He does, and he feels like an idiot, but she laughs merrily, pulls the ties on the end to bring him closer to her until he has to put his hands on her hips; and that was enough.

He doesn't buy it, but he instead holds onto the memory.

When they return home with some cookies, there are two messages on the answering machine. The first is from Xiaoyu, who says that she's passed all of her exams and that Miharu has finally joined her in college. The second is Hwoarang's relieved voice, who says Baek is finally awake.

Leo's overjoyed. Steve is too, he guesses. But when he looks around his dingy apartment, he doesn't see gold, gloves and grime anymore. He sees a canvas that's been filled and a woman that makes him feel closer to happy.

* * *

><p><em>Needles.<em>

Steve fights to forget them at night, he fights to remember the nice days he has with Leo where they train, and laugh, and cook, and read. Steve fights to forget the gloved hands, blank faces and the way Leo's Mother would pity him when he cries at night.

But the needles. They're all down his arm, at every point, at every vein. Taking blood or injecting serum.

He knows he is safe in the apartment. He can _feel_ Leo trying to shake him awake, but he can't be pulled from the memories.

And all they keep saying is, "NT01, NT01, NT01."

His mouth feels like it's blocked, like he can't fight back or speak. But then there's a bright light and it _makes_ him open his eyes. Steve's world is blurry, but he can still make out Leo, who is kneeling on the floor beside him, her warm hands on his hotter face.

"It's a dream, you were dreaming. You're here with me."

He has to say it. He needs to say it, the only goddamn mantra that's gotten him through all of this even before her; the only thing he values aside from the goddamn photograph he's kept for so long. And Leo. Because he values Leo and thinks so highly of her.

And like the universe knows, Leo's thumb gently sweeps over his cheeks, and she says it for him. "You are not a number, you are a man."

He nods a little and finds that he still can't say it himself, so she repeats it, over and over until his shoulders relax, until the needles stop and until he's able to put his hands over hers. She stays there until he falls asleep again.

In the morning, she brings him breakfast in bed, literally. And she's talking at a mile a minute again, like when they first met, when they practically walked into each other as they looked for other people.

"You put a smiley face on my pancake?" Steve asks curiously.

"I could put it on your face instead if you like," she jests.

"You do that anyway," he replies and starts to eat.

* * *

><p>"What do you dream about?" Leo asks one day. "I mean, besides needles."<p>

Snow's beginning to creep down from the sky. They're lying down under a tree in the park across the road. Steve replies that he doesn't really dream of anything, but that when he does dream, it's usually of things he's already experienced. Winning a championship and being told he's one of the best boxers ever. Graduating from university and seeing that his adoptive parents don't look proud or disappointed. Emma's hands. Needles.

"I don't know how someone can go through the nightmares that you have. I mean, I imagine they were worse once, right? And now here you are, giving them the old one-two."

"I'm not giving them the old one-two..." he responds hesitantly. "It's not that easy."

Leo says that she feels much better than when he picked her up from Heathrow Airport all those months ago. She says that when she landed, she couldn't imagine a day where she didn't think about her parents and how they were gone, and how she had lost home. But here she is, she reminds him; remembering the good instead of the bad, because of someone who chose to help.

"But you were never _dehumanised,_ Leo," Steve replies, sitting up. "You were always a person. I had to fight to be seen as one."

Because NT01 was a number, a guinea pig that just happened to be able to speak, who was self-aware and sentient.

"You're right," she says, sitting up from her position. She rests her hands on her knees and looks at him. "I never was. And I can't imagine what that was like. But what I see here is one of the best humans that I know."

"Not really."

She furrows her eyebrows at his response and decides to punch him in the arm. "Yes you are. The quality of a person isn't what they do, it's how they do it. And you fought hard to be recognised as a person, but you never sunk to their level. That's exceptional."

Steve thinks that he could kiss her then, and then he wonders where that thought came from. He startles himself when he ends up doing it.

* * *

><p>They're sparring, preparing Steve for an upcoming Christmas boxing match, when he says, "You came here months ago looking to get away from your reality. I was wondering if you were far enough now to tell me how they found him."<p>

He sometimes forgets that Leo came to him for help because she lost her Father, because the last of her hope of home was snuffed out. When he looks at her now, he doesn't see someone he feels like he needs to save. He sees that adventurous lion again – she went out on her own to the Hogwarts castle only four days ago and came back so happy.

Steve doesn't know if he'll ever truly be happy again. But he can see it now. He can glimpse it, he can catch it in her. And in the very least, she makes him feel something that isn't that droning, monotonous helplessness.

To his surprise, she continues to spar with him as she recounts the day she received a phone call from the police. Leo is able to perfectly recount what they said to her, how she felt; how nauseous she was when she had to be called in to identify the body. And in some sick way, he can picture it, with broken bones, ripped skin, crushed fingers. Just like he could picture the life draining from Baek, though he is damn thankful that the man woke up half a world away.

"I just couldn't deal, Steve," Leo says finally, lowing her stance and rubbing her biceps. "I couldn't deal with the fact that I had nobody."

"You have somebody. You have yourself back."

"I have _you_ too."

"I don't believe that counts quite as much."

He's still nothing, but he feels like that maybe he could be something for her.

They spar again, and the next day, and the day after that. But the one after that is the match, and although he doesn't feel like he's quite as good as the dark-skinned fighter in blue trunks, it's a show. There's a flurry of punches, his teeth feel like they're going to break just from clenching, and he feels _alive._

He wins, though, and it doesn't feel at all as magnificent as the fact that he is _alive._

When he looks at Leo in the stands, who gives a thumbs up and has that old, beautiful smile again, he feels like his fingers are finally at the top of the hole, clutching to the edge, ready to pull himself out.

* * *

><p>Christmas is gone.<p>

Xiaoyu and Miharu have gone to China for the holidays. They send photos to Leo's phone. Asuka's expecting a baby brother. They laugh as she explains why this is both a good and bad thing. Paul phones, has an hour long discussion about aliens, and then says that the Law family won a sizeable amount of money from the lottery and bought him a new bike. Baek returned home with Hwoarang. They listen as Baek finally manages to speak again.

And Steve and Leo are still in their apartment, watching stupid flicks on New Year's Eve.

The world around them continues to turn and evolve. Steve once believed that the world would continue to turn and evolve as he wasted away in the apartment – except now the apartment's evolved too. Less Union Jacks, more personality, and someone he cares about next to him.

He feels like that, at any moment, he could finally climb out of the hole. He knows how easy it is to slip back into it, though. Depression is like that. But he thinks that he can see happiness again, well and truly this time; and as long as he knows how to climb out of the hole should he return to it, it'll be fine, right?

Leo thinks so, she tells him so as she holds her teddy bear. She mentions in passing during the film that she'd like to return to Germany with him at some point and see where her parents are buried. She moves to correct herself, because her Mother's like his Mother in some strange way, after all why would he carry that photo in his pocket for so long?

But he simply says, "We can do that. Let me know when you want to go."

Steve doesn't know what they are or what they've become. He just knows that she's better, and that he is too. He never wants to see her broken again. He never wants to feel pointless again. They're better, from time probably, or maybe from each other. It doesn't matter how.

She suddenly switches off the television, right when the movie was getting to its climax. But that's life, he guesses – stops, steps forwards, back and sideways. But he notices that she's fidgeting on the couch to his right. He looks at her curiously and wondering what's bothering her, but he realises she's looking for words.

Words still elude him. About how he feels about his time in the laboratory, about those who adopted him, about his achievements and about his feelings for her. He finds he can get his point across better with hands than with words. But he hopes she can find words again.

Leo curls her front bangs around her finger, "There's something I think you should know."

Steve shifts in his seat so that he can face her entirely. He's somehow surprised and unsurprised when she leans forward and grabs his cold hands; but hers are so warm, and he is alive again.

"You opened your home to me, and there's nothing I can do that'll ever repay your kindness and willingness to help."

He finds that he can't correct her, that this isn't a home but a house. When did it become a home?

There are things they have bought, photos they have taken, and memories that they share under this roof. If the gold, gloves and not-grime were to burn down, there are some things he would like to save besides the old and frayed photo he continues to carry with him everywhere in his pocket. After he gets Leo out from its burning maw first, of course.

Her fingers trace over the back of his knuckles, scarred from years of aggression, but somehow still firm and strong. Steve turns his hands so that he can link his fingers with hers, and she smiles the old smile that he finds he can never get enough of. "You once said to me that home wasn't the things inside it or around it, but the people you're with. I lost mine. You never had one. But somehow, we made our own. And I think it's perfect."

Steve still can't make words form properly, and besides she's said them flawlessly already. So he lets go of her hands and reaches out to tuck some of her hair behind her ear, the longer parts that keep falling forward at the front. She laughs a little at that, just as he realises that that _thing_ he never had, he finally has.

"I could love you," Leo says, swallowing the thick lump that's in her throat.

"That's good, because I could love you too," Steve replies, and she reaches for him.


End file.
